Educational Technology Debate

We Should Celebrate Educational Technology in Affordable Private Schools

Shabnam Aggarwal — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:48:35 +0000

Governments, foundations, and the private sector are all engaged in the task of providing a quality education to the millions of children who are born into poor socio-economic circumstances throughout the world. This is crucial because education is seen as the most certain vehicle for breaking the cycle of poverty. As institutions embrace ways that education technology can play a part in accomplishing this goal, the developing world’s private school sector is well primed to explore the potential of ed-tech in the classroom. The market forces that shape low-income private schools have built-in incentives for both experimenting with new technologies and finding adoption methods that would work for their school. While government funded ed-tech initiatives have the potential to work, there are disadvantages to government-funded schemes that work against education technology taking root in the classroom. To illustrate this point, we’ll draw on the research that we conducted on education technology in Hyderabad, India’s affordable private schools (APS).

Affordable private schools (APS) empower parents in low-income communities with choices that are no longer restricted to the wealthy.

Some government schools in India do a fine job of teaching children solid academic fundamentals. However, according to the recently released ASER report on the State of India’s education, the overall trend in public school performance doesn’t paint an optimistic picture.

A little less than half of Indian children in 5^th grade can read at a 2^nd grade level, a number that has steadily declined from 53% in 2010. Similarly, the percentage of 5^th grade students who can solve two-digit subtraction problems has gone from 61% in 2011 to 53.5% this year. The students’ performance in the basics of math and reading is falling at a faster rate in government schools than private schools.

With APS, parents are no longer restricted to whatever free educational option is available in their communities. APS schools offer parents the opportunity to exercise agency and assert new forms of accountability with school leaders and teachers. As paying customers who are the financial lifeblood of the school, parents’ desires influence what the school leader invests in. One thing that parents largely want is technology.

Parents are drivers in APS technology consumption.

As it stands, the primary consumer of ed-tech in APS is the school leader. A portion of the cost may be passed on to the parents through technology fees; however, the primary financial burden lies with the owner. The reason so many school leaders take on this expense is because their customers demand it.

53% of parents use computer classes as a major parameter for deciding which private school they choose. The parents’ demand for technology has created a relatively high penetration of technology in schools. Based on our research for our report Education Technology in India: Designing Ed-Tech in Affordable Private Schools, 69% of Hyderabad APSs have computer labs and 58% have techno classes. The average expenditure on technology in APS schools in the 2011-2012 year was $2048.

School leaders seek opportunities to acquire technologies used by wealthier private schools in order to stay competitive among other private schools and to establish themselves in the eyes of the consumers—the parents. As a result, APS students get exposure to computer labs, smart classes with interactive surfaces, and digital projector solutions. It’s important to note, however, that though the technology penetration in these schools looks impressive from the outset, there are still challenges.

Technology can take it further.

The existing implementation of smart classes and computers have major weaknesses, but with each new ed-tech trend, APS stakeholders learn more about what their technological needs are and what kind of solutions can help fill those gaps. Emerging technologies in APS can help account for several shortcomings in the schools and help raise the students’ quality of education.

For instance, in our pilot of tablets in APS in Hyderabad, India, we saw how the device paired with the right content could be used to actually help teachers as opposed to attempting to replace them. The built-in assessments could automate the scoring, recording, and distribution of exams, creating more time for teachers to actually teach children new material.

With a 1:1 interaction with the device, students will be able absorb the information at their own pace and can help teachers accomplish differentiated instruction in the classroom without strong academic training. This becomes especially important for girls in APS, who we found have %40 less exposure to Internet than their male counterparts. With technology in APS, schools can become equalizers in the digital gender gap between students.

Technology’s potential to address challenges in APS is noteworthy, but another important element of ed-tech in APS is that cost keeps solution providers accountable to providing tangible value to the school.

Sometimes buy-in has a cost.

One of the most novel aspects of the tablet pilots that were conducted in Hyderabad is that the parents purchased the devices in monthly installments over the school year. Parents who could not afford the installments were given tablets that were subsidized by the school leader and could only be used in school. This gave the students full ownership of the tablets rather than the school. This sense of ownership made both students and parents especially concerned with keeping it intact.

More importantly, it generated some serious buy-in for making sure that the tablets would be used regularly by the students, and that it would deliver value. Parents made the expenditure in hopes of it being a tool that improves the children’s grades and help them develop educationally. The father of a 9^th grade tablet-owning student, who is an auto-rickshaw driver and shop owner, said: “We need to change according to changing trends and generations, and the same goes for technology. It is also easy to communicate with technology.” He bought a tablet so that his daughter can learn quickly, because “growth is possible through technology and knowledge is available through technology.”

In government schemes where devices are provided to all students for free, you do have the advantage of making sure all students have equal access to the technology regardless of their financial position. However, what is the consequence for poor adoption, or a weak attempt to make use of the technology? Providing free devices does remove some accountability for the kind of engagement needed from both schools and parents to make new technology solutions successful.

In APS, if parents don’t see convincing results for their investment, it sullies the reputation of the school leader and renders the tablet a sunk cost. This creates levers of accountability for both the school and parents to help enforce proper use of the tablet by students.

Why APS?

Technology works in environments that support it. APS schools self-select for parents who are willing to invest financially in their children’s education despite their low-income. This can create an environment where parents are open to trying new approaches to helping their children succeed academically. We witnessed this personally in the tablet pilots when parents showed a willingness to pay for personal tablets that their children would use in the classroom despite never having used a tablet themselves.

Because the schools are for-profit, capital investments must have some kind of value-add to justify the cost. These levers of accountability can create incentives for trying new technologies and actually being invested in adoption.

But perhaps the most important reason why we need to be having a conversation about ed-tech in APS is because private schools are the future of education for low-income communities throughout the world. Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed a quiet exodus from public schools in slums throughout the world. Enrollment in private schools across India has increased from 18.7% in 2006 to 28.3% in 2012. The Pratham’s annual ASER report adds: “If this trend continues, by 2018 India may have 50% of children attending private schools even in rural areas.” The trend of increased enrollment in private schools is growing from Lahore to Lesotho and shows no signs of slowing.

Private education is going to be a substantial part of educating children, so it’s in everyone’s interest that the quality of private schools be the best they can be. Through thoughtful implementation and well-designed solutions, technology can help accomplish that.

Kim Campbell is the lead investigator and author for the report Education Technology in India: Designing Ed-Tech for India’s Affordable Private Schools. Hila Mehr and Ben Mayer co-authored the report.

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Is Technology a Silver Bullet for Private Schools But Not for Public Schools?

Shabnam Aggarwal — Tue, 07 May 2013 08:22:43 +0000

As we move into the third decade of the technology revolution, our schools worldwide are finally taking heed. Today, we are hard pressed to find a public school where students, teachers, and principals had never heard of the mobile phone. 5 years ago, we could not have made that statement.

That being said, most teachers and students would also tell you in lockstep that they were not allowed to bring a laptop or other mobile device they own into school premises. Rules, regulations, preconceived notions, and an archaic education system are all impediments towards allowing government supported schools to capitalize upon the technology revolution.

Private schools, however, are exactly that – private. They are able to circumvent government rules on technology usage in the classroom due to the risk they take in offering education outside the public system.

Does that mean private schools are better slated to open their arms to all the benefits of educational technologies?
Or does that mean privates are more susceptible to untested, under researched, disproportionately priced products and services?
Or perhaps public schools are better placed to implement technologies since the business model depends solely on government funding rather than parents?

Join us for an in-depth analysis of these questions and the overall educational impact of technology in private and public schools in the developing world during the May Educational Technology Debate. If you would like to join the discussion as one of our 6 key lead discussants email us today!

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Will MOOC Technology Break the Education Cartel?

Shabnam Aggarwal — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:23:14 +0000

Part 1. The obligatory history lesson:

It happened to the record industry first. While popular music had long been available on radio, it could be argued that a true music industry as we know it today didn’t arise until the 50‘s and 60‘s when distributable media and players became widely available. To summarize – you bought your music on record, then on 8-track, then on cassette, and then on CD once again. Sounds very much like a ‘cartel’, or “association of suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition”. Record companies (not artists generally) held the content and the means of distributing it to us the passive consumer.

But that’s where technology turned. CD drives in computers plus early sharing software like Napster meant that instead of getting good at mashing the pause button on your stereo so recording to cassette stopped before the adds kicked in, you could rip a whole CD to MP3 in minutes and upload it for anyone who was also connected to the net. You could also bypass the record stores entirely by downloading songs, for free. It meant you didn’t have to buy your music a fourth time in some other format – you now controlled the file. No it wasn’t legal, but it was what the people wanted.

Fast forward to 2013 and we can choose to buy tracks one at time instead of ten at a time. NOW we have Pandora, and Spotify and Rdio et al. Now Music gets pushed to me. Now I tap a thumbs up button and more great tunes keep rolling in, for free if I put up with the Pandora Ads like four times an hour.

Imagine if the streaming music app Pandora was the education system. How would that change things?

The ‘cartel’ has been broken, or at least radically forced to change its ways. Dropping DRM restrictions on music files for instance means we the customer can choose when, where and how we want to store and play our music. Funny then that last year was the first time in a decade that the music industry saw an uptick in profits – after finally signing licenses for online services that are very similar to Napster.

Now get ready to lose your job – so says Jon Evans in a recent article at TechCrunch. His argument is that nearly all industries are facing a similar shakeup as the digital revolution enters a new stage and the stuff of the world moves into silicon. He quotes Chris Dixon’s remarkable idea that just as in the previous four technological revolutions, we are at the stage where new tech is replacing traditional jobs before new digital industries that will appear have had a chance to create new ones.

For example, as information has moved online, print newspapers are failing faster than they can hit on a successful digital strategy. Indeed, Wired reported nearly a year ago that some sports journalism jobs have already been taken by software that in part takes advantage of the proliferation of easily accessible data.

Part 2. The MOOC did it: What it all means for Education

“Education is the cartel that technology is going to break next” Heppell, 2011

“Higher education is just on the edge of the crevasse … I think even five years from now these enterprises are going to be in real trouble” Clay Christensen, 2013

So what about the education system? I mean its truly one of the only things that everybody has in common. In many countries its 5 days a week for up to 12-18 years! Its a system where what you will learn (the content) and how you will learn it (the curriculum) is highly regulated and centrally controlled, with the user/learner having very little say in either. Its also traditionally been an industry slow to adopt new technology. The US Department of Commerce found in 2003 that Education was actually the least IT intensive of 55 major industries (Dumagan, Gill, Ingram 2003). This may be due to an in-built caution when it comes to something as important as education, or it could be a lack of funding or access, particularly in the developing world.

There are some positive signs however that progress has been made in the last ten years. It was in February of this year that TechCrunch declared that ‘Massively Open Online Courses’ (MOOCs) were replacing physical colleges at a ‘crazy fast pace’, citing examples like the 125 million people who had signed up to MITs Open Courseware project, and the fact that some colleges are now offering courses that require no class time at all. Talk about giving the people what they want. It’s been compared to the introduction of self-serve in grocery stores in the 70’s and 80’s whereby a digitally-accessible education sees people picking and choosing their own learning rather than waiting for a ‘grocer’ to assemble it for them.

Increased learning options

So where once you chose one college or university and hoped that each semester there would be an interesting subject available to you, the availability of MOOCs means that anyone with an internet connection can choose a course from the world’s top universities such as MIT and Harvard, often for free.

For the remote and distant learners I work with, or those in developing countries where university-level education is not universally accessible, it means something even more – being able to study at all, and world-class courses at that. AfterSchoolAfrica.com has a good summary here if you need a quick overview of the history of MOOCs so far by the way.

Leveraging mobile device penetration rates

The other example of Education defying its ‘slow to adopt’ past has been the rise of mobile devices and the increased access to content they engender. Let’s take one of the best known as a case study – from nowhere in 2010 to outselling all Apple desktops and laptops in schools by mid-2012 by a factor of two, the impact of the iPad in Education has been an immediate one.

Tim Cook reported in October 2012 that over 2500 US schools were already using them. Closer to my home in Australia, the University of Western Sydney announced in December 2012 that 11,000 students will be equipped with iPads, and there are at least five ICT projects that I’m involved with that service remote and Indigenous learners using iPads as the content delivery mechanism.

App culture shock

It has also been the rise of the app-culture that arrived with the iPhone, iPad and Android devices that has disrupted the traditional delivery of content ie. apps like Zite push news about your interests to you for free in a way that apps by traditional Newspaper publications don’t seem to have ever considered. And the aforementioned Pandora (available on the web or even on older devices such as first generation Android phones) does the same for music.

Much of this ‘mobile device as distribution platform for online content’ model that is relevant for higher end devices is relevant for other platforms like that pioneered by World Reader who have used the Kindle eReader to now successfully deploy 441,000 books where there previously were none to over 3000 children in sub-saharan Africa. The project has also used a mobile phone app to deliver books to 500,000 mobile readers.

There is also an element where MOOCs + mobile devices allow the user to create and distribute their own content, whether it be using Udemy.com’s free online course tools, or iBooks Author for the iPad eco-system.

Part 3. The Future with MOOCs

So what will the Education system look like once this phase of massive online courses (content delivery) and smartphone/tablet integration (distribution) stabilises into a ‘deployment’ phase , and will it be lead by educators or entrepreneurs, a tension that apparently was highly obvious at the recent South by Southwest Education event in the US?

If you want my opinion, and lets face it, you’ve read this far, I see that what is emerging will be courses and schools based on interest not just on the luck of the draw method we currently have thats decided by where you live or postcode, ie. where you happen to live. Once flexible and even user-generated learning content embedded in MOOC’s trickles down to a primary school level, and super-capable mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are deployed widely enough to provide ubiquitous access, its really only the process we use to harness them (especially how to keep some strategic face to face time in the mix) that remains to be solved.

As OpenCulture.com has highlighted, MOOC dropout rates are extreme, with some such as a Duke University course run through the Coursera MOOC only seeing 3% of 6000 initial enrollments complete the course. This is the peak of the curve referred to in the EdTechDebate teaser email. Converting enrollments to completions by getting the human interaction element right may be key in justifying the current massive investment in MOOCs once the first phase of excitement abates.

For learners in remote locations or developing countries the promise of increased access to the keys of education must of course also be considered in light of the reality of the internet access needed to make much of it possible. For the present, using SMS (current example here; more info here), or basic mobile phone apps like in the WorldReader exemplar above have been shown to be successful options.

When these aspects are satisfactorily solved then, we are left to ask – Can we actually trust people to choose their own education like they choose toothbrushes, or say, tracks on Pandora? Sugatra Mitra who just won the $1 million dollar TED prize for his ‘school in a wall’ work would say yes. Do yourself a favour and ponder all these questions while watching his presentation here. Does it make you want to tap ‘thumbs up’ to add more like it to your stream of learning content?

Jonathan is a Mobile and Digital Learning Project Officer supporting remote and Indigenous learners in Queensland Australia, as well as an NMC K-12 Ambassador, Apple Distinguished Educator and former OLPC Deployment Support Officer. You can read more of his articles at his Education blog, follow his #EdTech tweets as @jnxyz, offer him a job if you think he can help, or find additional links and bio at jnxyz.net.

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Learn Experientially and Connect Globally with MOOCs

wayan — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:09:40 +0000

There’s a new kid on the block that is changing how learning is designed, delivered and experienced. Called a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), it is making a big splash, with the potential to reshape education for learners, teachers and educational administrators alike.

These days, MOOCs are where it’s at. Mix together, an educational offering (which includes pedagogy for online education ); savvy marketing and a whole lot of hype for a compelling promise that a MOOC can reach vast numbers of people around the globe at an extremely affordable cost.

MOOCs can provide the offering educational institution or NGO tremendous with tremendous visibility, reach and access to a global constituency of learners at a fraction of the cost of traditional education, as well as the ability to package new course content and recycle older titles. Successful or not, MOOCs are altering how education (traditional and online education) is taught, managed and leveraged. They’re also creating new opportunities for democratizing learning, connecting learners, sharing and transferring knowledge, and monetizing education.

The origins of MOOCs stem from the pioneering work of Canadians Stephen Downes (National Research Council) and George Siemens (Athabasca University) who offered an open and free online course called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. Their experiential course leveraged distributed knowledge across across a network of individuals (connections) and enabled learners to build and share their knowledge dynamically. In 2008, their first course attracted 2200 learners with a call for participation at any level – people could lurk quietly, contribute loudly, or find a role somewhere in between. All educational materials were freely-available online and all course content was available through RSS feeds, and learners could participate with their choice of tools: threaded discussions in Moodle, blog posts, Second Life and synchronous online meetings. The course was repeated in 2009 and 2011.

Around the same time, was the ambitious Learning4Content project from WikiEducator.org and Commonwealth of Learning, and funded in part by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Learning4Content was billed as the world’s largest free wiki skills training project utilizing MOOC-style online courses (see L4C 2009 report in Sources). Participants and graduates helped WikiEducator become a strong community of 18,000+ educators in 120 countries). Stanford University has since offered MOOCs and more recently, Coursera and Udacity.

Challenges & Opportunities

There is considerable debate about the merit and value of MOOCs. Some critics see MOOCs as a means to reducing classes and instructors to achieve great economies of scale and reduce cost. Others recognize the challenges, but are trying them out, learning about the mechanics of putting together MOOCs, and observing how a MOOC can add to the teaching and learning experience.

To be fair, MOOCs are in their infancy, with a lot of experimentation regarding design and delivery. There is wide variation in the teaching and learning experience – with some institutions simply offering online learning with MOOC-style access (i.e., open to all), and others really thinking about the importance of quality, and what needs to happen in terms of logistics and support and pedagogical design to ensure that people actually learn what they are being taught. Typically, MOOCs do not offer credit or grades, but in the case of SUNY’s OER 101 course some credit options may be available.

It’s easy to get lost or discouraged in a course with 2,000 or 100,000 people with little if any personalized attention. Indeed, the dropout rates are quite high – yet on part with many of the world’s largest open universities. Different people learn at different paces and bring different learning styles. Early MOOCs have a one-size fits all approach, but over time, teacher-facilitators are experimenting with different avenues for interaction including blogs, forums, discussions and videos.

The lack of training for teacher / instructors in online facilitation and teaching with this new medium compromises the learning experience and achievement of beneficial learning outcomes. Often a supportive and well-versed teacher can make the difference in a poorly-designed course and create opportunities for additional interaction, discussion and connectedness even when courses are primarily self-paced.

Bridging the North-South Divide

But these are growing pains – as any new technology, system or approach is bound to have. MOOCs experiment with a mix of technology (and education technologies) such as a learning management system, videos, discussion fora, instant messaging for learner support) to reach greater numbers of learners in the North, South and all points between. Already, there’s been a difference identified between Constructivist MOOCs (cMOOC) – focusing on knowledge creation and generation and xMOOCs (focusing on knowledge duplication). See John Daniel’s paper on MOOCs.

MOOCs offer a tremendous opportunity to learn and share knowledge synchronously and asynchronously to benefit students, course designers and subject matter experts. This experience provides information to increase quality, as the offering institution/NGO has access to thousands of potential beta testers to crowdsource improvements and obtain feedback for future iterations.

In my experience, that’s what happened in the Learning4Content MOOCs and mini-MOOCs, we noticed that learners were not completing their coursework during the 10-day period. Interviews with participants revealed that the course pace was fast; materials complexity high, and that in general, the course was really a discretionary activity (i.e., not tied to their job). I collaborated with Leigh Blackall of NZ, to redesign the existing course and reduce the time involved by 50% (to 5 days). We noted that if people learned wiki skills basics, they would be motivated to continue learning and support others. If they did not learn the basics, then there was no point in trying to get them to learn advanced skills – or, what we considered advanced skills! We launched the next iteration and reported much better results.

As an open online course, there are significant opportunities for research and program development, yielding a treasure trove of data that can be analyzed (keeping in mind privacy concerns) and utilized to improve the learning experience and enable new patterns and ideas for future learning opportunities to emerge. This flows nicely into research opportunities that can focus on efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability.

I also experienced this through the Learning4Content MOOCs, whereby I could follow complex, yet emerging patterns and connections as people shared their experiences and challenges while learning wiki skills. In particular, I observed a community radio practitioner from Kenya converse with a training coordinator in Switzerland about opportunities for sharing knowledge related to HIV AIDS Treatment Literacy. This discussion thread lead to a groundbreaking project to break down the silos between community radio professionals and scientific experts, so that community radio programming in Africa could benefit from the latest evidence-based information about HIV AIDS Treatment Literacy, and it could be delivered via educational programs expressly-designed for community radio in Africa. It also led to the creation of educational materials, workshops, train-the-trainer support and on-the-ground interventions via LearnShare HIV AIDS Africa Portal and the Community Media Community of Practice – it was a considerable success.

MOOCs can also respond to the lack of qualified teachers by providing teacher training to a much larger group of teacher-instructors and subject matter experts who are paid to teach their skills but have little background in teaching. Mozilla’s Open Badges could provide a model certifying skills or levels of achievement, which in turn could support capacity-building and peer recognition on a grand scale. Another area of opportunity is exploring new business models to support and monetize education. For example, while MOOCs provide the course experience for free, additional learner support, 1-1 coaching, examinations and even textbooks would have a small cost. If a course has an enrollment of 1,000 people, a required text at $25-50 could make for an enviable return-on-investment.

Many opportunities abound for imagination, ingenuity and experimentation. I look forward to your thoughts and questions as to how MOOCs can be leveraged to support change, learning and development.

The Author

Randy Fisher, MA, is an Education Specialist with the Information and Communications Technology Council in Ottawa, Canada. He has expertise in ICT4E, and in facilitating change and building sustainable and scalable communities for knowledge-sharing, networking and capacity-development He was a course designer and facilitator for a wiki skills MOOC and moderates an ICT and vocational education community (INVEST Africa) for the Commonwealth of Learning, and is a global leader in Open Education Resources.

Sources

Daniels, John, 2012. Making Sense of MOOCs. Retrieved from http://www.aiqus.com/questions/41231/making-sense-of-moocs-20-page-report-by-distinguished-he-distance-learning-educator April 6, 2013
Good MOOCs, Bad MOOCs by Mark Bousquet, July 25, 2012. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/good-moocs-bad-moocs/50361 April 6, 2013.
Learning4Content Project. Retrieved from http://www.wikieducator.org/Learning4Content April 6, 2013.
Learning4Content Report, 2009. Retrieved from http://wikieducator.org/images/a/ac/L4C_Report_Aug09.pdf 2009 April 2, 2013.
Mozilla Open Badges. Retrieved from http://openbadges.org/ April 6, 2013.
SUNY OER 101 course. Retrieved from https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-BBLEARN/courseHomepage.htmlx?course_id=_226718_1 April 6, 2013.
Taylor, Valerie (Instructor at DeAnza College in California) – MOOC page – Retrieved from http://wikieducator.org/User:Vtaylor/MOOC April 6, 2013.
WikiEducator – Community Media Community of Practice, http://www.wikieducator.org/Community_Media
WikiEducator – LearnShare HIV AIDS Africa Portal, http://wikieducator.org/HIVAIDS_Portal
Wikipedia, Connectivism entry, 2013. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism April 6, 2013.

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The Importance of Context and Human Factor in MOOC Education

wayan — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:37:52 +0000

Óscar Becerra has just written The One Laptop Per Child Correlation With Massive Open Online Courses where he compares the OLPC project with MOOC initiatives.

In a nutshell, the Becerra argues that MOOC should not be compared to other higher education initiatives or institutions, but to what MOOCs can bring to “non-users” of education, as the OLPC should be judged not in comparison to schools, but in comparison to “non-schools”, that is, no educational institutions at all.

I mostly agree with the author, but there are some omissions that are very worth being mentioned… as they may place us, at least, in a more skeptic point of view. Or, in other words, nor may MOOCs might be compared with a comprehensive and affordable educational system and neither should the OLPC be compared with the total lack of alternatives.

First of all, it just happens that education is not about the apprehension of content, but about transforming information into knowledge. Or, in other words, education is about empowerment.

Quite often forgotten, there are two kinds of MOOCs: connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCs) and non-connectivist MOOCs (xMOOCs). While I find the former empowering, the latter I find them not: just an interesting but mere channel of content distribution. Unfortunately, cMOOCs are rarely dealt with and only xMOOCs are the ones being discussed. Like the article in question. Thus, comparing a non-empowering tool like xMOOCs to a supposedly empowering tool, like the OLPC, is a difficult exercise to do.

Education, empowerment, or development, on the other hand, do not happen in the void, but in a given context. A personal context. A personal starting point. And there is increasing evidence that one’s starting point will tell whether one will improve or worsen one’s situation with a given tool, e.g. laptops or MOOCs. We call this the knowledge gap hypothesis and there are many examples on how public libraries, access to newspapers and information, or laptops in the classroom have a multiplier effect: if you’re in a good position, you’ll do better; if you’re in a bad position, you’re very likely to do worse. So, what is the position of these “non-users” that have now access to the OLPC device or to a (c)MOOC?

Last — and very related with the previous point —, development or empowerment is not only about the existence of individual resources and the possibility to use them, but the personal will or emancipative value to want to use them. Welzel, Inglehart & Klingemann called this the having the objective and the subjective choice of development (to which we have to add effective choice, of course).

Indeed, our last point summarizes the first point (access to MOOCs seen as objective choice) and the second one (the knowledge gap hypothesis as subjective choice).

And there are two common issues in our three points: context and the human factor. Context of the user, both the exogenous context (the socio-economic status, their community, etc.) and the endogenous context (level of education, mental and physical health, etc.), both of them determining what will happen with the objective choice. And the human factor as the facilitator or enabler, which will guide the objective choice through subjective choice into effective choice — again determined by the context provided by legal and cultural framework.

So, MOOCs can be compared to the OLPC in the sense that they both provide good tools to “non-users” of education, but I would refrain myself to say that they both, by themselves, provide rough alternatives to the educational system. Not by themselves.

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The One Laptop Per Child Correlation With Massive Open Online Courses

wayan — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:06:25 +0000

A recent article by The New York Times describes a software application that will grade student essays using artificial intelligence to ease professors’ workload when working with large quantities of students like the ones registered for MOOCs.

The article generated many comments; most of them can be classified under two categories. First are the ones questioning such approach based on the poor quality of the feedback and the low level of human interaction which they consider the key to real high quality learning like what happens in Ivy League kind of universities as Harvard, MIT, Yale, Berkeley and the like. The second category refers to the people who may successfully try to cheat the system by getting positive feedback to nonsense writing or the equivalent to good grades with poor or no learning.

What surprises me is how far off are these critics of the real target population whom the MOOCs really benefit. Nobody may question the quality of education at an Ivy League university is outstanding and superior to most universities worldwide, online or not, with artificial or human intelligence involved in the process, for those who can pay for it.

But who, among the critics, thinks about the millions of students around the world for whom Higher Education is non-existent or unreachable? What about the thousands of universities so limited, their degrees would not be accepted by any serious accreditation agency? In Latin America, with hundreds of millions of potential Higher Education consumers, there are under ten universities qualifying in the world’s top 500 on any ranking, and not even one among the top 100.

Also, if we, just for a moment ignore the people who are willing to cheat, who are not the target population, and think about those who are willing to learn and would be able to do so thanks to the MOOC’s now available; which happen to be the only education they can get.

MOOC Target Audience are Currently “Non-consumers” of Education

Sir John Daniel, in 2012 published an article entitled “Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility” where he analyzes the attrition rates in Coursera and MITx. He reviews the numbers for MIT’s course 6.002x, Circuits and Electronics with its 155,000 registrations and 7,157 passing grade students. Daniel cites MIT’s Anant Agrawal noting “while the rate of attrition may seem high… it’s as many students as might take the course in 40 years at MIT”. It is foolish to think those over seven thousand students have a Circuits and Electronics training comparable to that of a regular MIT student, I don’t think anybody can truly believe that. What is in question is if their training is good enough to give them certain basic competencies they might be in need of, and someone interested may test them about. MOOCs are not a replacement to Ivy League education for those who can afford it. It is a new form of education for those who had nothing else or do not need anything else.

What we need to bear in mind is that the MOOCs are trying to make better quality education available to a great mass of people who are currently “non-consumers” of education and such quality is currently superior by far to whatever they may be getting right now. The MOOCs are not aimed to people who are willing to cheat but to those willing to learn. I don’t think the automated offerings are trying to compete (nor pretending they are able to) with Ivy League offerings. Those who want to understand the phenomenon taking place might want to watch Harvard’s Clayton Christensen’s talk at the October, 2011 “The Future of State Universities” conference hosted by Academic Partnerships.

Essentially, what Christensen says is that History has demonstrated again and again that every industry faced with disruptive innovation will eventually be overtaken by those who, in the beginning, seemed low quality available only to non-consumers. What is still to be seen is if MOOCs and online education are really disruptive innovation in education or not. That must be the discussion and not if the quality is comparable to that of Harvard and MIT or how easily can someone, with enough effort, cheat the system to get a passing grade.

As early as 1949, British Psychoanalyst, Donald W. Winnicott coined the expression “a good enough mother” to refer how “ordinary” people may have normal children, in spite of the mistakes that are usual when rearing children in everyday families. Paraphrasing Winnicott we may say the MOOCs and online education offerings available today are “good enough educational offerings” helping ordinary people who are willing to learn to reach goals that had been out of their possibilities so far. Computers, Internet and AI grading software may provide a new and innovative kind of transitional space (another Winnicott concept) for learning to be nurtured if and when people willing to learn interact with people willing to teach them.

Of course such transitional space is not the same as the one provided by top quality institutions and top quality professors to the best and wealthiest of the world at their classrooms, but maybe, just maybe, as I think Christensen said, it’s just a matter of time.

One Laptop Per Child Corollary

When I was involved in “Una Laptop por Niño” (Spanish for One Laptop per Child), one of the world’s largest one to one laptop projects, in Peru, we had lots of criticism because a computer cannot replace a good teacher; some thought a better idea was feeding and vaccinating children, and others still thought better planning and teacher training was needed before even attempting to begin. The ICT industry players reacted because, in my humble opinion, their bottom line was at stake and, finally an impact study by the IADB found that the children who received a laptop had outgrown their peers by four to six months in cognitive development over a fifteen-month period.

To me, the fact that, in just over two years, over 200,000 children of the most remote dwellings in the Andes and jungle of Peru were able to interact with technology and learned how to operate a computer for the first time, was good enough. By the end of my tenure, almost a million laptops were distributed or ready to go to almost one hundred thousand public schools countrywide, benefiting over six million children. There is still a lot to be done but the foundations were laid and those children had a great opportunity.

Now, when I see the criticism developing around the MOOCs and online education I cannot help but remember my experience with OLPC. It is not the best and the top breed who are at risk, but don’t let them deprive the ones at the bottom to get at least something that is good enough. J. R. Young in an article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education in July, 2012 mentions university officials fear of not being able to “do it well”. According to Mr. Rodriguez, of the University of Virginia. “These are high-quality potential substitutes for some of what universities do.” It is that potential what we should be able to help become real.

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MOOCs Will Come and Mostly Go Like Other EduTech Fads

wayan — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:00:48 +0000

MOOCs – massively open online courses – are the latest hit in educational technologies. MIT and Harvard have partnered on EdX, and Stanford computer-science professors have kicked off Coursera and Udacity. Meanwhile, Bill Gates and others fawn over the Khan Academy. University of Virginia president, Teresa Sullivan, was even temporarily ousted because she was not perceived by her board of trustees as moving quickly enough to start UVA’s own MOOC-like offering.

So, is all of this hype justified? I tend to think not. And to explain why, it will help to categorize MOOCs into three types: 1, 2, and 3.

Type 1 MOOCs: Content and Technology Only

Type 1 MOOCs are those that consist almost solely of educational content placed online. They make no serious attempt to take attendance, administer proctored tests, provide call-in numbers for human tutors, give certified grades, or otherwise do anything that goes beyond providing just the educational material. (Incidentally, the issuing of printable certificates upon clicking the “Finish” button does not count as a “serious attempt.”) With Type 1 MOOCs, the content may be fancy. It may include interactive simulations, educational games, adaptive problem sets, videos of uproariously entertaining professors giving lectures, etc., but it will not include things that require significant human effort.

Type 2 MOOCs: A Little More than Content and Technology

Type 2 MOOCs include a little more than Type 1 MOOCs. They attempt to provide some aspects of the regular school experience beyond mere educational content. There may be real-time online chat with tutors. There may be some way to take proctored exams. There may be an office that issues certified transcripts of students who have taken courses.

In any case, Type 2 MOOCs are an attempt to be more like a real school, with the content delivered in much the same way as a Type 1 MOOC, but other components, such as human grading, or help from human tutors, provided in a way that requires human administration. Type 2 MOOCs vary greatly in exactly what they offer, but most like to emphasize that they do more than just offer content online. They know that Type 1 MOOCs aren’t enough. For example, one experiment along these lines is to have remote human proctors watch sped-up video-recordings of students taking tests in order to reduce the likelihood of cheating.

Type 3 MOOCs: Regular Online Courses

The third type of MOOC is not really a MOOC at all. It is traditional distance learning or a traditional online course. These are real courses that are organized, taught, graded, and certified by real educators, but which just happen to use online channels to engage with students. They include regular distance-learning courses, and are rarely either “massive” or “open” in the sense that the material is offered free to anyone with Internet access. Most Type 3 MOOCs will usually charge significant fees for classes. They need to, to pay for the teachers, the graders, the administrators, and the infrastructure.

Impact of Type 1 MOOCs – Minimal

Overall, I expect that Type 1 MOOCs will have very little impact on educational worldwide. Type 3 MOOCs will continue to have educational impact, in proportion to the seriousness of the educational institution behind them. And Type 2 MOOCs will tend to become Type 1 or Type 3 MOOCs over time.

As I have written elsewhere, technology amplifies human intent and capacity. In education, human intent and capacity includes both pedagogical intent and capacity of teachers and administrators, and individual intent and capacity of students.

Type 1 MOOCs will probably not solve any major problems in education. Why not? Because real problems in education require considerable human effort, and Type 1 MOOCs, by definition, do not provide that. Type 1 MOOCs are just collections of educational material sitting online, and educational material sitting online is no better than educational material sitting in a textbook.

In a previous article for Educational Technology Debate, I wrote that the real problems of education are problems of student motivation, not of educational content. And student motivation is a challenge that content alone, however entertaining and gamified cannot easily solve. (The potential of games to address educational challenges is intriguing, but requires a separate analysis that this article will not go into.)

Of course, there are students who have a lot of self-motivation, and MOOCs will be helpful for them (they will amplify the impact of the student’s motivation). But, even before MOOCs, there was a vast amount of educational material available free online. It doesn’t require new MOOCs to support the highly motivated student.

Impact of Type 3 MOOCs – As Good as the Institutions Behind Them

At the other end, there are Type 3 MOOCs. These will amplify the pedagogical intent and capacity of the institution running them, and there will always been an institution running Type 3 MOOCs. Type 3 MOOCs are real schools first, and online gimmicks second. Type 3 MOOCs will certainly allow schools to reach a larger set of students, and the technology used to run them could lower some costs so that someone in the system will benefit from greater revenue or lower prices. Cost is the Type 3 MOOCs best selling point, but the cost reduction will be scalar – each student will cost some non-trivial amount that will likely not shrink below an order of magnitude of regular tuition.

But with reduced cost, there’s a consequence. Type 3 MOOCs will never quite be as good as the real thing. At physical schools, students can engage in lively face-to-face discussion; feel the responsibility to attendance and assignments that physical classes impose; get a boost from the camaraderie of shared struggle; create long-lasting friendships that become valuable social networks; etc. As a result, there will always be a place for the physical school – and here, I’ll risk the prediction that however popular MOOCs become, and however many experiments there may be to replace physical schools with MOOCs, physical schools will not only survive, they will continue to prevail. At the very least, the world’s elites will always pay good money to send their students to the best places to build social capital.

Impact of Type 2 MOOCs – In Between, and Tending Toward Type 1 or 3

And then there are Type 2 MOOCs. Type 2 MOOCs are where the most interesting experiments will happen, at least from the perspective of someone interested in MOOCs as a phenomenon. For example, technologists will get excited about the prospect of automating each of the human components of education. Grading, for example, is being increasingly automated, and there’s no doubt that that technology will improve with time. Unfortunately for techno-utopians, however, there will always be critical parts of a good education that are not readily computerized. And, as long as we allow inequalities in education to exist, there will be some people who won’t benefit from the existence of the best technologies, even if they were comprehensive. We’ve had automated grading of multiple-choice tests for several decades, but at least in the United States, educational inequalities has nevertheless increased since the 1970s.

Type 2 MOOCs are thus inherently unstable. They will tend to slide down to Type 1 MOOCs or climb up to Type 3s over time. Type 2 MOOCs will have to charge someone for the extra value that they provide. And whoever pays the bill will demand two critical components of formal education: real learning by students and certifiable sorting of students.

So over the long run, Type 2 MOOCs will either get paid to deliver the full package, or forego pay and value-added components that bump them above Type 1 MOOCs. (Ad revenue is often raised as a possibility, but I think this is a bad idea for the same reason that it’s probably unwise to poster physical classrooms with junk food ads to generate revenue for public schools.)

Where We Should Focus

The best test of MOOCs (or of any educational concept, for that matter) is to see where their strongest proponents send their children. I expect that anyone making good income from MOOCs will send their own kids to the best physical school they can afford, or otherwise ensure that qualified adults are deeply involved in their education. At best, MOOCs will serve as a supplement.

Ultimately, MOOCs will come and mostly go, like television-for-education came and mostly went. MOOCs are here to stay, but in a few years, there will be some other fad to excite today’s MOOC fans. Meanwhile, the world of the future might have a few more people learning online, but very quickly a new equilibrium will be reached, and things won’t be all that different from today: students from underprivileged backgrounds will continue to lose the educational race; parents with means will ensure the best (non-MOOC) education for their kids; and most students won’t learn that much more or less than they learn today.

…unless, of course, we make the hard social and political decisions to pay for excellent adult guidance in education for everyone, by which I don’t mean buying every charter-school student a laptop loaded with Khan Academy videos and educational video games.

A version of this article was originally published as Kooks and MOOCs by the ICT4D Jester.

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3 Ways MOOCs Unleash the Power of Massive International Attendance

wayan — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:25:39 +0000

During my life I have always been interested in how ICTs can contribute to a better and sustainable development of the world. Education is one of the areas where that contribution can really make a difference. MOOCs (massive open online courses) might be one of the most versatile ways to offer access to quality education, especially for those residing in far or disadvantaged areas.

I have been reading many recent articles on MOOCs and how universities –mostly US ones – either feel threatened or believe it to be a universal solution to their budgetary issues.

So far the immediate effect caused by MOOCs on those of us growing up far from prominent universities is the opportunity to access quality education to complement “traditional” education one might be receiving locally. If you have participated in any MOOC, you might agree or not about the delivery or evaluation method or question its effectiveness, but you cannot deny the quality of most of them.

But from my point of view it is the massive attendance to the course the most relevant and interesting characteristic for analysis.

Mass Customization

Since their conception, MOOCs are not like “traditional” e-learning courses. Managing course delivery and evaluation for thousands of students at the same time requires adapting the model from the very beginning, making it completely automated. What we are seeing now is that different MOOC platforms are experimenting different teaching models and strategies. What models are best and which will survive? We don’t know, but for sure the competition is providing us with invaluable data to improve future implementations.

Universities and private organizations alike are running to positions themselves as MOOC leaders. This makes sense because the large number of simultaneous students potentially accessing the same content at the same time, from all over the world, requires a solid server foundation and impeccable response time. This is one of the reasons why only large universities or institutions can host this type of courses, and this is why it makes sense for small organizations to outsource the service rather than have their own servers.

But massive access to content doesn’t necessarily mean less quality. Personalized massive is possible, and though most MOOCs seem to serve the same course content to all participants, agent technology will soon allow for “individually” designed content to be delivered to each participant.

Data Bonanza

And because for the first time we are having thousands of people with different profiles accessing the same content at the same time, the opportunity for doing a statistical analysis of the population’s behavior is fantastic. We can know – with some limitations – when people connect, what sections they consult, how much time they spend, the errors they make, the resources the access. And then cross link the usage data with the user’s profile: age, sex, location, educational background, etc.

With large masses of collected data one could infer and detect trends, and as a consequence adapt course content to become more efficient and effective, and for example reduce drop off rates. But more importantly, we could learn why and how people take online courses, and improve e-learning in general. However, even though MOOCs have been in use for several years I still haven’t seen any statistical analysis of its usage by different user profiles. If you have any available please add it as a comment.

Self-Organized Groups

Another interesting consequence of the large number of attendants from all over the world is how these participants have organized themselves, the groups that are formed, how the collective intelligence of the worldwide audience can question the course content and turn it into truly globalized experience. This area of MOOCs is in its infancy, and a lot has to be experimented on social interaction, group work and virtual communities. But to me it looks that for some participants MOOCs are becoming not only a learning experience, but a life experience.

In summary, MOOCs represent an ideal that still has to be materialized into feasible, sustainable solutions. But I am looking forward to learning more about this new way of learning, and how it can better serve those that have less chances of accessing quality education.

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Are Massive Open Online Courses Massive Opportunity or Massive Hype?

wayan — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:26:18 +0000

Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and many more top name universities are launching Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to hundreds, and hundred of thousands of students. Often prompted by entrepreneurial professors and private companies, the race is on to open up higher education to the online masses.

Yet university professors are already entering into a schizophrenic relationship with MOOCs – when polled, 79% believe MOOCs are worth the hype and yet only 28% believe students should get formal credit for them.

What is the impact of MOOCs on education in the developing world?

Do MOOCs offer massive opportunity to move past the limited physical constrains of the developing world’s universities? Could we see MOOCs break past even the online and distance education gains to become a paradigm shift in educating the youth bulge that is overwhelming formal educational structures?

Or are MOOCs just the latest fad in moving from the tried and true in-person relationship between professor and student? Do they replace in-depth analysis and learning with superficial glances at complex topics? Will MOOCs dilute the university degree even more, reducing higher education to just another certificate of perseverance instead of an indicator of intelligence?

Are MOOCs about to reach a peak of inflated expectations before dropping into a trough of disillusionment already filled with other edu-fads (like OLPC laptops)?

Join us for an in-depth analysis of these questions and the overall educational impact of Massive Open Online Courses on the developing world during the April Educational Technology Debate. If you would like to join the discussion as one of our 6 key lead discussants email us today!

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UNESCO Policy Guidelines for Mobile Learning

wayan — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:21:54 +0000

UNESCO believes that mobile technologies can expand and enrich educational opportunities for learners in diverse settings.

Yet most ICT in education policies were articulated in a ‘pre-mobile’ era and they do not seek to maximize the learning potentials of mobile technology. The rare policies that do reference mobile devices tend to treat them tangentially or ban their use in schools.

Today, a growing body of evidence suggests that ubiquitous mobile devices – especially mobile phones and, more recently, tablet computers – are being used by learners and educators around the world to access information, streamline administration and facilitate learning in new and innovative ways.

UNESCO’s newly developed Policy guidelines for mobile learning should be embedded within existing ICT in education policies, which many governments already have in place. In order to leverage the opportunities afforded by mobile technology and other new ICTs, education officials may need to review existing policies.

This set of guidelines seeks to help policy-makers better understand what mobile learning is and how its unique benefits can be leveraged to advance progress towards Education for All.

Developed in consultation with experts in over twenty countries, the guidelines have broad application and can accommodate a wide range of institutions, including K–12 schools, universities, community centres, and technical and vocational schools. Policy-makers are encouraged to adopt UNESCO’s policy recommendations, tailoring them as necessary to reflect the unique needs and on-the-ground realities of local contexts.

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